Josh Meceil
Josh Meceil is the former Leader of the Opposition and current leader of the Labor Party. He was elected the fourth Prime Minister of Qumar in the 1996 Qumar Election . Early Years Josh Meceil was born in 1932 in Germany. He grew up there with his father and brother and studied hard in private schools because of his families mass wealth. In 1956 he moved to Russia and started to work as an economist for the Russians, who later sent him to be a special envoy to Iran for Economic Affairs. When his three year term ended, he decided to stay in Iran and later became involved in Qumar. He was elected to parliament in 1981 and has been in it ever since. Minister for Foreign Affairs Josh was the Minister for Foreign Affairs under William Monroe and served a long four year term focused on building relations with Russia, the UK, India and Qumar 's neighbors. Josh worked on several minor trade deals during his tenure. He was aswell, the nation's representative to the United Nations, as was tradition with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Qumar . Leader of the Opposition In the 1988 Labor Party Leadership Election , the party re-elected incumbent Prime Minister, William Monroe , to be leader of the party again. However, when Monroe failed the party in the elections, Josh Meceil was elected to take his place, having been the runner up in the former leadership election. As Leader of the Opposition, Josh focused most of his time on making good Shadow Cabinet appointments and keeping the Ministers on their toes. He continously decided to focus his efforts on assisting the current government rather than campaign against them until the next election. The people of Qumar were quite pleased with that and he personally had a huge polling jump. He had the party then go on the offensive in 1991 with the 1992 elections around the corner. In the Labor Party 1992 Leadership Election , Meceil was re-elected leader of the Labor Party with high approval ratings. He was not however able to lead the party to a victorious election with the Conservative PM's high approval rating, Quraen Sheraz. His party lost several seats in the 1992 Qumar Election. Meceil immediately began gunning at the party to ensure their victory in 1996, and when the Conservative Party began to have internal troubles, he went on the news often to talk about their issues in running the nation. It was extremely effective. Meceil later won the 1996 Labor Leadership Election. He continued to serve as opposition leader until he was elected Prime Minister in December. He campaigned very hard for reform of government, cabinet and several programs and was able to win the party the most seats in history. Prime Minister of Qumar Early Days Josh Meceil was elected Prime Minister of Qumar in 1996 and took office January 1st, 1997. He immediately appointed Julia Fernan, an MP of the Labor Party, to be his Deputy Prime Minister. She was often considered a young and exciting face for the party and he considered her a good second face of the nation and his labor government. He appointed a fairly radical cabinet in order to show the change in the Labor Party with hopes of keeping their majority for more than four years. Tax Increases Within three months of the new government, Meceil had pushed through a 2% increase in national taxes for rich, and nearly 1% for middle class citizens. This brought down the administrations poll ratings signifigantly as the government had no intent to use the money any time within the near future. Capital Riots/Budget Crisis Capital riots broke out in September of 1997 just a few months after the tax increases when the government still was unable to pass a budget. With the extra $30 Billion in income, Parliament was unable to decide how to use it with the labor party being massively internally split. Many news agencies and some members of parliament even discussed splitting the party into two due to these recent debates and how uncompromising the Prime Minister was being with his government. Over five members of parliament had secretly had discussions with the national party about potentially switching parties midterm. Meanwhile, riots continued in the capital as the government began to shut down. Almost three hundred thousand government employees, teachers, police, etc, where out of work for three weeks while the government defaulted and weren't able to pay them without a new budget. Josh Meceil continued to push the idea of more social spending in mass amounts along with Defense additions, while increasing education and healthcare salaries, a total of $42 Billion in additions, or about $7 Billion in deficits. The party was very against him and pushed for a $33 Billion increase with more social programs and only slight pay increases, while many members of the party wanted to simply pass the old budget and revoke tax increases. October 1st, 1997, half a million people marched down the capital mall and stood outside of parliament and the Prime Minister's office demanding a budget with reduced taxes and increased wages, no new social programs. The day after, the party forced the old budget to be passed with no additional spending or cuts with 207 Votes for, then, in private, forced the prime minister to sign it. He found it a huge sign of weakness to sign the new budget into law and did it with much reluctance. It was at this moment several members of the party started what would become the 1998 Leadership Spill. Protests Protests continued in the capital long after the new budget, but only with about three or four thousand people. Without pay increases, many workers still decided to stop by after work and hold a picket sign for an hour or two yelling in front of parliament. The result was disasterous for the party's polling numbers as they dropped under 30% favorability. 1998 Leadership Spill On April 17th, 1998, in private the labor party meet and voted on the leader of the party. Prime Minister Josh Meceil lost the vote to his deputy, Julia Fernan, who took office as the 5th Prime Minister of Qumar just three days later. After PM Meceil continued to be a member of Parliament for several more years before finally retiring in the early 2000's.